The biggest problem we have found during the last 8 events we hosted is how to reliably let people know that we have a screening. Most of our communication was done through our Facebook Page, but over time that became more and more unreliable. Fewer people can see our posts, many never even get a notice that we have an event going on, and generally cannot get the same exposure as we used to. This is a general change in Facebook’s behaviour and troubles every other organizer as well.

On the other hand, not that many people come to our blog, and those who come would need to remember to check the page regularly to see if we have announced any new events?

Much better if we can go to our fans directly – if someone tells us that “yeah, I want to hear when you have the next screening!”, then we should be able to get in touch with them. For this, a newsletter is probably the best (even if not perfect) way.

So now we have a newsletter. Here’s the sign-up form below. We’ll send out emails only to keep people informed, and see whether it enables the creation a more satisfied community. :)

After almost 3 months of preparation, the next screening of Future Shorts Taipei is now ready for you! We have finished preparing the English and Chinese subtitles for all 6 films, and setting everything up for this week!

You can also RSVP on the Facebook event page. Entry is 200TWD, and films start at 8PM sharp, so come earlier to have a seat! There’s space for about 40 people.

Volume

I prefer to be surprised by the films just like you do, and films shorts pack a lot of punch indeed in their few minutes. I still had to watch everything beforehand to make sure it’s all in good working order for you to see and boy am I excited about them! I’m blown away by the quality of the selection in every season since our first one almost 2 years ago. It’s brilliant, exciting, inspiring, unsettling, thought provoking. Usually not for the faint of heart, and that just adds to the experience.

Now that everything is prepared, see you in a few days for an awesome screening. Bring your friends too, movies are better in company! :)

Only a few hours left till we have this Autumn’s screening tonight – here are the Facebook and Google+ event pages.

Subtitles for Autumn Season (from On the Line)

I feel that in some way there are more work gone into this than any of the last 3 seasons, but actually every season was somewhat experimental:

The last winter season was the first time we have ever put on such event, even such kind of event, thus it was all new, everything had to be seen for the first time. And it was the first time Future Shorts blown my mind with their film selection.

The spring season was going to be bigger, we had a premiere and a grande screening. The grande needed much more arrangement, huge auditorium (well, for us, 220 people), our biggest audience to date, online ticket sales, and the fact that the film selection was 18+, which surprised me. And it was amazing again, edgy, clever, pushing the boundaries.

The summer season was a bit more laid back, just a simple screening, kinda run out of time to do much more, even if there were plans. It was one great time, and finally the first screening on which we haven’t lost money. :)

For the autumn season, the one premiering tonight, we tried to get Chinese subtitles, so we can extend our audience a bit more, out from the English speaking community in Taiwan. Some amazing volunteers worked with us, and the global organizers had finally some Chinese translations, which altogether makes a better experience. Let’s see how it worked out. The process need some fine-tuning, but things should definitely work smoother this time than before, from the technical point of view.

It’s time to set up our venue. Looking forward to seeing you tonight. :)

Movies are best enjoyed when you know what’s going on. Duh! One cannot speak all possible languages on Earth, that’s even bigger issue with Future Shorts, where in one sitting, withing the course of one-and-a-half hours you can watch 7 movies from 5 different countries. Also, the same films are shown in dozens of countries around the world. That’s why we have to rely on subtitles to get our message to the local audience.

Tumult (UK, 2011, by John Barrington)

For Future Shorts Taipei we made it a priority to get some kind of subtitles for every film we show, and as the first stage of the project, we had English subtitles for our Spring and Summer programme already. But that’s not enough. Taiwan is a special place, and we have lots of local and international friends here. Not everyone speaks English, and not everyone can read Chinese. Thus we want to be able to prepare double-subtitles for all our films: both English and Chinese (just like those fun movies on the HK movie channels I’m quite fond of :)

For that we need your help: we have the English subtitle files – could you help us translate it to Chinese? If you can please get in touch with at fstaipei@gmail.com, or in the comments below. Then we’ll be able to get you some sample of what does need to be done. Don’t worry, not too much text.

We are planning some more screening of the summer programme before the end of September, and this would be a great help. Thanks in advance!

We have just wrapped up our Spring Season. We had a great Premiere and also a Grande screening. The films themselves were exquisite, and I had a great time organizing it as well. Here’s some results of the votes for the Grande screening:

And the winner is….

I cannot say the top position is really unexpected, though I’m glad that all films had votes cast to them. The global winner of the festival will be announced some time today, I’m curious which one, whether the taste of the Taipei audience coincides with the global taste.

In the meantime we have some more photos in our album here from our weekend screening, thanks to BigYo (the “normal” photos are by me, the good ones are by him:).

The Man Without a Head

While waiting for the Summer Programme to kick off, here’s one film from the Spring Season if you haven’t seen it yet.

Also, if you have been to one of the screenings, we’d be really happy to hear your thoughts on how to get better, either leave a comment below, post it on our Facebook page, or send an email to fstaipei@gmail.com, thanks!

After our Premiere screening, now we are ready for the next step: bringing Future Shorts to a wider audience. That’s why we are going to have our next event in a 230 people auditorium in the NTU. It’s on May 27, Sunday evening, from 7pm. A bit more than 2 weeks left and still a lot to prepare. There are hundreds of screenings around the world (click here to see a quick list), and for example on the same day there’s another one in Ukraine. Joining us you are really joining a global community of film lovers.

Future Shorts 2012 Spring Grande cool card design

Tickets

This time we are preparing mostly pre-sale tickets, you can book your tickets by clicking here. If you have any problem with booking, please just contact us at fstaipei@gmail.com, and we’ll sort it out.

At that link you can also see the list of films that are on the programme this time. We have 7 movies, some animation, some documentary, all quite different style, with one overarching topic – examining relationships. Though this time that also means that the films have to be restricted for only over 18 years olds.

Our venue is 台灣大學 應用力學館國際會議廳, NTU Institute of Applied Mechanics Building, International Conference Hall, and here’s a handy map to get you there (that outlined yellow spot there with IAM label):

How to get to our venue: Applied Mechanics International Conference Hall.

The MRT Gongguan and MRT Technology Building Station should be quite close for public transport, and should be some parking space nearby as well. And this is pretty much how the place looks:

Applied Mechanics International Conference Hall

Coming from Hungary, I can tell you this is pretty much how most of our cinemas looked like in the 1990s, so for me it’s a quite homely feeling. Hope it will work out well too.